Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Mobile Commerce News Weekly – Week of October 27, 2013

The Mobile Commerce News Weekly is an online newsletter made up of the most interesting news, articles and links related to mobile commerce and marketing, mobile payments, mobile money, e-wallets, mobile banking, mobile ads and mobile security that I run across each week. I am specifically targeting market size and market trend information.

IBM has announced the acquisition of Xtify, a provider of mobile messaging tools that allows push notifications to reach customers. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Read Original Content

Mobile e-commerce is rapidly growing in the Netherlands and it is expected to be the growth drive for the e-commerce sector in the coming years. A new study, conducted by Blauw Research for Thuiswinkel.org, reveals mobile e-commerce in the Netherlands rose 67 percent year-on-year in the first half of 2013 to €550 million, reports Telecompaper. Read Original Content

According to a recent Shopgate report, retail needs to appeal to smartphone using consumers. Shopgate, a highly recognized m-commerce business solution, has released a report called the “2013 Holiday Guide for Online Retailers”, which provided the top 10 recommendations for success, this holiday season. Among those points, the focus on catering to smartphone users was a considerable one. Read Original Content

Verivo is a leading provider of enterprise mobility software. Verivo helps companies accelerate their business results. Its unique technology empowers teams to build, deploy, manage and update their mobile apps -- rapidly and securely. Verivo’s mobility platform is used by hundreds of companies in numerous industries, worldwide. This newsletter is sponsored in part by Verivo.

The mobile retail audience in Europe has seen some pretty tremendous growth over the past year, at least in the five biggest markets across the continent. In the three months ending in August of this year, the European mobile retail audience was 31 million, an increase of over 43 percent from the same period the year before, according to data from comScore. Read Original Content

Mobile commerce at Argos more than doubled in the first half of its financial year to account for 16 percent of sales, one year into the general retailer’s digital transformation plan. Some 43 percent of its total sales were made online, including through its Check & Reserve service, with commerce over both tablets and smartphones growing by 124 percent, and powered by new smartphone and tablet apps. Read Original Content

A recent report from BuyDesire and Econsultancy on mobile marketing and commerce has determined that show rooming may not be as great of a threat as expected, as only 11 percent of retailers participating in a study claimed they felt it is a shopping behavior that could be harmful to their own revenues. Read Original Content

eMarketer has released the result of an in depth analysis of the direction that mobile commerce is taking and, in doing so, has revealed a considerable amount of insight that pertains specifically to consumers who are among the most affluent. For example, the eMarketer research showed that 49 percent of smartphone users in the affluent category used their devices for searching for store information such as to obtain directions, open hours, etc. Read Original Content

Multimedia messaging service or MMS is considered by many brands as the next big thing for mobile-advertising. Brands including Ikea, Kellogg, Bloomingdales, Starbucks and TV networks ABC, Fox and CBS have started marketing outreach programs designed for SMS and MMS as the medium can be used for multimedia ads, inclusive of videos. Read Original Content

In late August Amazon announced a major overhaul of its affiliate program, finally making it “mobile friendly”. This update of policies and tools includes the introduction of a Mobile Developer API to allow developers to leverage the growing number of online shoppers making purchases anywhere but at their desktops. With these latest updates, all signs indicate the king of e-commerce is going “all in” in the game of mobile commerce. Read Original Content

comScore released an overview of mobile phone usage across the five leading European markets using data from the comScore MobiLens service. The study showed the European mobile retail audience grew by 43 percent over the past year, with 20 percent of smartphone users accessing online retail sites and apps using their device. Read Original Content

The largest online marketplace in India, Snapdeal, has just released its mobile commerce data and has revealed that currently 30 percent of online purchases are originating from smartphones. Read Original Content

When it comes to using social media to drive online sales and conversions, Facebook is more impactful than Twitter. “As compared to Twitter, Facebook is responsible for 10 times the number of shares, 20 times the amount of site traffic, and 30 times the number of new customers acquired,” Curebit vice-president Brad Kam tells VentureBeat in a new report. “Twitter is simply not as relevant for commerce.” Read Original Content

The results of a new study by Parks Associates have now been released and have shown that over one in four shoppers of consumer electronic products in the United States who have broadband capable devices use mobile commerce apps on their smartphones in order to help them make a purchasing decision. Read Original Content

According to some of the latest information that has been released by ABI Research, a number of industry giants – including Google, Apple, and eBay – are placing their focus on making considerable moves into the realm of geolocation and its many possibilities. Though this is not necessarily anything new, it is the fact that they are taking it indoors that is drawing attention. To start, the estimates by ABI Research have suggested that the geolocation indoor market will be worth more than $4 billion by 2018. Read Original Content

According to IDTechEx Ltd., the NFC applications market is likely to witness tremendous growth at a nearly 35 percent compound annual growth rate in the upcoming years, spurred by the rapid technology adoption and increasing application of NFC technology in mobile phones. Read Original Content

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and SMAC analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.